


Nothing But a Figment of My Imagination

by themazeballet



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 20:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13256433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themazeballet/pseuds/themazeballet
Summary: written forcosmiko_ling's artwork (foundhere) fori_reversebang. thank you so much for this artwork and an opportunity to write for you, cosmiko ling! :D





	Nothing But a Figment of My Imagination

Eames crashed into the wall, his hand shooting out at the last moment to latch onto a grip. He hauled himself up painfully, biting his bottom lip in concentration, his eyes in narrow slits. He grunted, pulling himself over the wall and brushing off his uniform with a frown.

"All right there, old man?" his partner, a man named Mitchum, asked. "Or should I say, Captain?"

Eames sighed. "You can sod right off," he grumbled. "What are our objectives, then?"

Mitchum tugged a thick black book out of his pack. "Objective 21-AL, secure northern point, latitude forty-two degrees north, longitude twenty-seven degrees east."

"Even in a bloomin' dream," Eames muttered as he pulled out his GPS, tapping their co-ordinates into it.

"Well they say you're the best, Captain."

"You're only as good as the last man on your team," Eames replied, and then cracked a grin. "Luckily, it's only me and you on this mission." He frowned down the other side of the wall. "Now, what possessed me to dream this wall so bloody high?"

"Classic over-compensation, boss."

"Sod off," Eames said cheerfully, hopping down and hoping for the best.

"Aye, aye, Captain."

+++

Dreaming up desert terrain was easy. The trickiest bit was dreaming up distinctive landmarks and making sure to mark them well.

So when they came upon the positively Amazonian rain-forest-like oasis, Eames was the first to scramble out his map. "What's this then?"

"It's your dream, Captain."

Mitchum was almost always tapped as the subject, since his projections were generally almost always peaceful.

"Guns out," Eames said automatically. "The dream might've been compromised."

"By whom? It's a bloody training exercise!"

"Then it's part of the training exercise," Eames snapped. "I didn't dream a rain-forest. It wasn't in this training protocol."

"You must have done," Mitchum said, his voice softening into his 'scared patient' tones. Mitchum was deputy surgeon for a reason; he could remain calm in almost any circumstance.

"Now's not the time for questioning my authority," Eames said, and then held up his hand. There was water splashing somewhere in the distance.

They walked down a slight incline. "We're sort of conspicuous, sir," Mitchum muttered as he slipped. "What in our desert BDUs and all."

"Nobody's taken advantage of that fact yet," Eames muttered, but thought very hard about his BDUs. They morphed into their standard olive drab, and Mitchum whistled softly between his teeth.

"And that's why you're the best."

Eames shrugged, holding up a hand. He pushed aside a comically large leaf. This rain-forest fixture was more like a fever dream version of what the actual Amazon was like, over-saturated and over-large. The splash of the water was coming from a perfectly blue and white waterfall that towered over Eames's and Mitchum's head.

They stood at the edge of the pool where the water splashed into, barely remembering to breathe.

"Even if this isn't your dream," Mitchum managed in quiet awe, "you've still got one hell of an imagination, Captain."

Eames squinted. "There's something in the water," he said, and to confirm his suspicions, a dark-haired head broke through the water.

It was a man, of sorts. He was shirtless; Eames guessed probably fully nude. He looked young and yet remarkably well-preserved. His eyes were dark, and he watched the two men with no hostility.

"Tell me that's one of your projections," Eames said finally, and Mitchum shook his head.

The man stepped, or swam, closer. "Stop!" Eames called, his voice ringing out, and the man froze. "Who are you? State your name."

The thing--Eames could no longer call it a man, not the way its eyes stared, nor how pale and cold its skin looked--opened its mouth, then tilted its head. "I don't have a name yet." It spoke English with no discernible accent, but the voice was much, much too old for its face.

"Then why are you in this dream?"

"A dream? This is my home. Why are you in my home?" It looked as if were swaying, and then it turned away from Mitchum and Eames, diving below the water's surface so quickly they barely saw ripples.

"All right," Mitchum breathed.

"Right, time to terminate this mission," Eames said, swallowing down the sudden lump of fear in his throat.

+++

Eames smoked a cigarette as he pretended to read the newspaper in front of him. He could read French, no problem, but his mind was very far away from the marriage of Nicolas Sarkozy to Carla Bruni, although he did spare a thought to how lucky Sarkozy was to have such a beautiful trophy wife. He flicked ash of the end of his cigarette into the tray, although some of the ashes floated and landed on his newspaper.

He looked up just as a tall blond man came striding towards the table. He looked over his sunglasses, and then lifted his hand lazily.

"Eames?"

"The one and only," Eames replied, standing up for a moment to shake Cobb's hand. "Dom Cobb?"

Cobb nodded and sat at the table, clasping his hands together. "Thanks for agreeing to meet me."

"I'm always willing to meet a man curious about the PASIV," Eames said, and then leaned forward. "I'm not exactly legal, though, Mister Cobb," he added, _sotto voce_ , before leaning back.

"Well, that's just it," Cobb replied. "I've tried all the more acceptable channels. It's difficult to get a PASIV without university or military approval."

"I looked you up. Your father-in-law--"

"He's a professor at a university in Paris, that's true, but in architecture."

"Well, then, it should be easy for him to get a hold of a PASIV."

Cobb chuckled. "Well, let's just say he doesn't like the idea of my wife going under anymore." Eames tilted his head. "She's breast-feeding."

"Oh well, then. You're looking for someone to run tests on, is that it?"

"No, no! Did I make it sound like I was? I'm looking for the PASIV, and some Somnacin. I've got...well, I've sort of got a test subject. He's ex-military, like you."

Eames nodded, contemplating another cigarette. The waiter came, and Cobb ordered in slow, but correct, French. Eames didn't order anything else. "I happen to have an extra PASIV," Eames said idly. "And I know a good chemist here in Marseilles who can mix you a batch of the standard Somnacin." He pulled out a silver card case from his pocket. "Tell me something, Mister Cobb--?"

"Yeah?"

"Have you ever had a dream interrupted by another dream?"

Cobb frowned. "What do you mean?"

"For example, you've set up a standard dream, and suddenly, you come upon something you couldn't have possibly dreamed up." He thought for a moment, about that impossible rain forest, about the pale man with deep dark eyes. "A memory, perhaps, or a different dream."

Cobb started when Eames said _memory_ , but otherwise made no remark. "Can't say I have, no," he said quietly.

Eames nodded and wrote some names and numbers on the back of the card, sliding it over. "Pleased to be doing business with you, Mister Cobb. Maybe this won't be the last time we meet."

+++

Eames had an undeniable talent for extraction and forgery. Ever since his 'retirement' from the Royal Air Force (much to the distaste of his superiors--Eames had been an excellent soldier), Eames sold his skills in the dreamscape technology for a pretty price. There was no service too small or too illegal, although Eames usually begged off some of the sexual fetishists, because it took him too long to recover mentally from those types of dreams.

The dream community itself was self-contained, small and filled with two types of people: the intellectuals and the ex-soldiers. Eames had a small group of people he worked with again and again, but he knew of others. Cobb's, especially. Cobb usually worked with the same people over and over again, and Eames would hear stories of their extractions from his team members.

There was a rumour Cobb was looking for a forger for a new project, so Eames went through the usual (and not so usual) channels to get in contact with Cobb, and when he sauntered into Cobb's hotel room in Melbourne, Australia, the first words out of Eames's mouth were, "You're harder to get a hold of than the Prime Minister, Cobb. Cloak and dagger's all well and good, but is it really necessary for me to know twelve people that _might_ know your number?"

"Standard operating procedure," Cobb said as they shook hands. "Like you said when we first met, what we're doing isn't exactly legal."

"Yeah, well...what are you doing, exactly?"

"I'm all extraction now," Cobb said, gesturing for Eames to sit down at the table in front of the the large picture window, sliding over a file.

"Ah, no longer the intellectual pursuit of dreams, then?"

"Haven't been, not for a while."

"And how's the wife?" Eames asked, and then glanced at the tightness around Cobb's mouth. "Stepped in it, haven't I?" He waved his hand. "Abracadabra, and we switch topics. I hear you're working with a real piece of work. American military standard."

"Oh yeah. Arthur. He'll be here in a moment; he's doing some last minute surveillance."

"Sounds like a laugh," Eames muttered, standing up to peruse the mini bar. "What does he do for you?"

"What doesn't he do would be easier," Cobb said, accepting the bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale from Eames graciously. "He can find his way through any computer system imaginable, and bluff any security measure. I think he's a robot."

"I keep telling you, Cobb, android. I'm still half human."

Eames turned towards the new voice, and blinked. "A-Arthur?"

"Yes?"

Eames stood up to shake Arthur's hand, holding it a little longer than necessary.

It was almost like seeing double: Eames could not shake the vision of the being from the waterfall. This Arthur wasn't as pale, but everything else about him was the same. Eames felt a horrible, sinking sense of déjà vu and dropped his hand.

"Sorry, you just look like someone I've met before," Eames said, picking up his beer again. "All right, so tell me about this job that needs doing."

+++

The next time the men met up was for a very large inception job for a very important client. Eames did not, as a rule, like tourists, but Saito was interested and interesting, so he let the intrusion slide. He thought that he must be getting soft in his old age.

Eames wasn't quite sure what to make of the team, but he had worked with worse ones. Everyone seemed to be an expert in their field, and while Cobb was going through something that he refused to share with the class, he still had solid ideas about how the inception should go.

Working with Arthur chafed in the worst ways. Everything about him was wrong, and nothing like the beautiful nymph-like creature in his dream. He managed to shake off most of Arthur's more acerbic comments with aplomb, but every night it seemed he was stuck pacing his tiny rented flat, smoking cigarette after cigarette and venting his spleen to a very patient Yusuf.

"Ariadne, I think we need a shortcut." He leaned over the design Ariadne had planned for his dream level, memorising the entrances, exits and even parts of the landscape she had sketched out surrounding the area. Military expertise was never a bad thing in the dream share.

"What do you mean, a shortcut?"

"Well, what if we get ambushed by Fischer's subconscious?"

"Is his subconscious...trained?" Ariadne was still not quite sure of the lingo, but she soldiered on, and was cottoning on quite quickly.

"Well, we're digging pretty deep inside his brain. It might not be trained, but the subconscious can throw all sorts of things at you."

"Is your subconscious trained?"

"Of course it is," Eames replied, frowning over the model. "I think we need some vents. It wouldn't do to have no fail-safes. Not that I don't trust our fearless leader..."

"You don't seem to trust a lot of people," Ariadne said, shrugging. "If you say we need vents, we'll put in vents."

"Why can't everyone be as nice as you?"

"Insert 'Arthur' for everyone, you mean?" Ariadne said, and Eames had to laugh.

"Well, yes, that's true," Eames said, watching Ariadne sketch in Eames's fail-safe.

"Two military men who don't like each other. What a shocker."

"Clever girl," Eames murmured. "Want to help me test out my level?"

"Is that what you ask all the girls in your life?"

Eames laughed and patted Ariadne's back, getting up to go get the PASIV.

+++

Ariadne and Eames stood in front of the giant white hospital/military compound, frowning up at the vent that Ariadne had hastily added to the level. "You're right, this is a good back up."

"I'm only ever rarely wrong," Eames said, and winked at Ariadne. He looked around. "You're bloody brilliant," he said softly. "You've got a very good eye for detail."

"I guess it's sort of in my job description." Ariadne looked around, and then touched Eames's elbow. "Eames? Why is Arthur naked?"

Eames twirled around. "Uh..."

"Is he just a projection?"

The creature-that-looked-like-Arthur walked towards them, stopping a few feet in front of them. "Welcome back to my home, Eames," it said, and Eames stepped slightly forward to cover Ariadne. "You have nothing to fear."

"Who are you?"

"I'm afraid I don't understand the question."

"Is this how you see Arthur?" Ariadne asked, but Eames shushed her.

"Who is Arthur?" the creature asked.

"He's someone that looks like you," Ariadne replied, and Eames shushed her again.

"I am not Arthur," the thing replied, and Eames sighed.

"Then what are you?" Eames asked, finally managing to speak again.

"I am just a dream," the thing said, smiling. ("And now you know it's not Arthur, it's bloody smiling," Eames murmured to Ariadne.) "What are you doing in the dream?"

"Working," Eames replied, stepping a bit closer. "You've been in every single one of my dreams for six years now. Why are you following me?"

"You'll need me one day," it replied. "For now, I'm just watching."

"Can I ask you a favour?"

"Perhaps. I cannot grant wishes."

"Not a wish. We'll be in this dream again, and there will be others. Can you not let anyone else see you?"

The nymph nodded, and Eames for the first time noticed the fine lines sketched over one of its shoulders, like a delicate, web-like tattoo. "That is possible."

When Ariadne and Eames both came back out of the dream, Ariadne shook her head. "There are too many secrets in this team," she said finally. "It's going to fall apart."

+++

It was not a phone call Eames was expecting, a year after the Fischer job.

"There's something wrong with Arthur," Cobb said, voice strained. "He's not answering any phone calls, e-mails, not even his texts. He's fallen off the face of the Earth."

Eames frowned down the line. "If you can't find him what makes you think I can?" But he agreed to go look for him--Eames was in semi-retirement anyway, and life had got a little boring.

He started where he always started looking for 'disappeared' dream-share folk: New York, Manhattan to be precise. It wasn't his favourite thing, hunting down spooks and half remembered names from decades ago. He found former soldiers and intellectuals and 'people who knew people', and got a clue: Brazil.

Eames slept on the entire flight to Rio de Janeiro, and dreamt of his nymph with Arthur's face. He knew that we was one of the few dream-sharers that still dreamt without aid, not that that knowledge gave him any comfort lately.

"You're looking for Arthur," the nymph said as soon as Eames found him. "You know he's here."

"That just a projection," Eames said. He was sat on the edge of the 'nymph's' lake, his trousers rolled up to his knees. "I can't take a projection back to Cobb."

"What is the difference between this projection and the man you seek?"

Eames had not become used to the nymph's voice, even after seven years, nor the strange stare nor his deceiving stillness (Eames believed the nymph moved too fast for his eye to notice).

"Because the projection only exists in my mind. He's not real."

"He is real to you. He is your Arthur." The nymph glided towards Eames. He stood very close to him--they had never touched, Eames and the nymph, and Eames stayed his hand this time as well, though he was sore tempted to run his fingers over its cheek.

"I don't need to find _my_ Arthur. As it stands, I don't like him much anyway, so finding him at this point is more of a favour to Cobb."

"It's strange, the things you do, for someone who is barely a friend."

Eames woke up, angry and a little more than chagrined: a figment of his imagination saw more clearly than he did.

Eames spent much longer on the shore, enjoying the sun and gorgeous women than searching for Arthur. His guilt was assuaged by caipirinhas and the most beautiful-appointed hotel suit he had stayed in for a very long time.

He wasn't reminded of the point of his loafing until three days later, when an unsigned note was slipped under his door.

_What happens when you take away the odds?_

The handwriting was spiky, unfamiliar. Eames stuck his hand in his pocket, running this thumb around the edge of his chip--it had been Arthur who had explained the importance of staying grounded in dreams, something it seemed none them could do, anyway.

Eames called Ariadne, the only person on the team it didn't take a decoder ring and twelve weeks minimum to track down. "Arthur's missing."

"Well, I would be even less able to find him than you," she said. "Where are you?"

"Brazil, but my intelligence was wrong." He played with his poker chip, moving it over the back of his fingers, and told her about the note.

"I think it's a decoy," Ariadne said, and sighed. "How about Berlin or Kyoto? If he's just taking a hiatus, those two cities were his favourite."

"I hope he's just on a hiatus, then," Eames said, and booked a flight to Kyoto.

+++

Eames did not find Arthur in Kyoto. On the flight to Berlin, he dreamt not of the nymph, but of someone much more important.

"Arthur. Even if you're just a projection, it's good to see your face."

Arthur shrugged. He was clad in the leather jacket from the Fischer job and soft looking grey corduroy trousers. Eames thought this was much more his style than all the fancy, stuffy suits he liked to parade around in during other dreams.

"I hope you're just on holiday," Eames said, "because I had a hell of a time getting a false identity to get back into Europe."

"Is that why you're an ex-pat?" Arthur's voice sounded exactly as it always did, which was more of a comfort than Eames liked to admit.

Eames nodded. "The last, best international dream thief at your service."

"Why do care so much about a man you said was barely a friend?"

Eames grimaced. "Because I made a promise. And whatever I happen to think of your real-life counterpart, I never break a promise."

Arthur snorted, leaning back on his elbows. "What if you're too late?"

"Then I failed." Eames lifted an eyebrow. "Luckily, I'm never late."

+++

Eames was right of course: he was always exactly on time.

He found Arthur in Kreuzberg, in a forgotten factory basement. The air still smelt of old rubber and grease as Eames descended the stairs, having disarmed and killed one of the guards quite neatly.

Arthur was strapped to a deck chair and a PASIV device, blind-folded and with headphones on. There were small electrodes taped to his head and wires snaking out of his left trouser leg, a machine marking down the progression of his thoughts and his pulse. Eames imagined strips of paper miles long, tracking Arthur's dreams, and bile rose in his throat.

Eames strapped himself into the PASIV, and found himself standing in front of the doors of the British Library. Eames pushed open a door, and no one stopped him.

And while the outside was an accurate replica of the Library, the inside looked like every library in every city in the Western World. Eames walked cautiously to a map of the library, and still no one stopped him.

Eames frowned over the sized of the place. Immensity did not even _begin_ to describe the situation--the library was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside.

Eames was a gambler, a risk taker and sometimes, a wild guesser. He ran his finger down the index and chose European history, 1912-1918, made a note of the floor, and sought a lift, trying to the ignore the creeping eeriness of being alone in an empty library that was too big to exist anywhere except in a dream.

His gamble paid off--Arthur was sat at a table right in front of the lift, a book open in front of him.

Next to him sat Eames's nymph. "We were wondering when you might get here," the nymph said, smiling serenely at him.

Arthur kept turning the pages of his book, oblivious to Eames and the nymph. Eames stepped a bit closer. The pages in front of Arthur were blank, but as he turned the pages, they filled with words.

"What's happening to him?" Eames asked, conscious of his voice in the stillness.

"He's being emptied of his secrets--they're recording them."

"And all these books are filled with things Arthur knows?"

The nymph shrugged. "Arthur knows many things."

"Can we stop it?"

"It is just a dream."

"Why isn't he aware of us?" Eames held back the strong urge to wave his hand in front of Arthur's face.

"Because he is deaf and blind in his waking state, and is made so in his dream."

The nymph turned his gaze back to Eames. "It seems I am a part of him just as I have been a part of you."

Eames nodded, opening his jacket and drawing out his pistol, clicking off the safety. "Just don't say that makes us soul mates or something."

The nymph laughed, drowned out by the echo of Eames's gunshot ringing out in the silence.

**Author's Note:**

> written for [](https://cosmiko-ling.livejournal.com/profile)[**cosmiko_ling**](https://cosmiko-ling.livejournal.com/) 's artwork (found [here](http://cosmiko-ling.livejournal.com/60511.html)) for [](https://i-reversebang.livejournal.com/profile)[](https://i-reversebang.livejournal.com/)**i_reversebang**. thank you so much for this artwork and an opportunity to write for you, cosmiko ling! :D


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